Duty

Dear associates in the path,

I am very happy that we are all united again to celebrate the 141st birthday of 'our grand Master Pujya Lalaji Maharaj. I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars quite some time back. In fact when l came to the feet of our Lord Babuji these were given second place in my search. I started listening to the teaching of my soul. I understood much later that Sufism and Santmat and “Samarpan (let-go) and constant remembrance are the driving forces of his teachings. In the lineage of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi Order, the transmission of knowledge is carried out "heart to heart". It travels from the heart of the Master into the heart of the disciple through his love and his devotion for the Master and grows with the practice, provided the disciple transcends his ego.

Many of the aspirants who are acquainted with this think that Pranahuti and the heart to heart teachings of the Sufi are the same and they even state that our Master has simply adopted this feature without proper understanding of the procedures in this regard. Some use such languages that they know with utter disregard to the Truth in the matter.

It is a fact that Lalaji Maharaj met his Master, the great Sufi saint Hazarat Fazal Ahmad Khan Sahib Raipuri, in 1891 and spent 16 years in his company. This saint gave him full powers to train others on October 11, 1896. However he began his teaching in 1911, after he had assimilated the best of various religions had founded a new method drawing liberally from Sufism and Hinduism. His method however also makes it possible to realize ones’ true nature in God for all without giving up family life and in a short period of time. This becomes possible, thanks to the Master enshrined in their hearts and who accompanies them through the entire spiritual journey. His teachings we realise is also bringing a social and spiritual regeneration. He could raise his disciples up to the highest states (the central area) with his will. He is a pillar of Santmat (Sufism beyond the religion).

His teachings may be shortly stated in 7 points:

1)         Engage your body and soul in the practice of listening to every heartbeat, super imposing there with the nomenclature of the Lord (AJAPAJAP).

2)         Pure Keep your heart, away from the corrupting influence of undesirable things and undesirable company.

3)         Always keep attuned to the Lord; your attention should never waver for a moment deviating there from.

4) Concentrate your attention on the heart and keep your heart centered in the Lord.

5)         Endeavor to attain kin-ship and attachment to the Eternal truth, the Lord of Universe.

6)         Gradually erase the identity and try to merge in, and attain oneness with God.

7)         Be ready always to make the Large sacrifice of life in the endeavor.

For qualifying ourselves for this type of training the most important qualification is having firm grip over the goal of life. Master stated that it is the primary duty of man is to realise his nature. How can this be a duty? Because it is God who has created this universe with His will. In fact it is the Will that is the basis of us and I remind all of you that it is because of that the process of Pranahuti was discovered by the Master. I may for fun add that “Accha” is the word that is the origin of Pranahuti as given to us by our Master.

Sacrifice is the root cause of all creation even as asserted by the Vedas. Sacrifice, service and cooperation are the ways of being happy and blissful. The nature of God is bliss and all that He seeks through creation is the happiness of all creatures. Elucidating further it is obvious that this is naturally linked to progress in spirituality of all of us and in fact the progress of humanity into the next stage of humanity. The goal of man is divinity. Rev. Babuji Maharaj stated that it is the primary duty of man to realise. That leads to the question what is duty?

Everyone in his office or station in life has certain duties to discharge and he is considered to have successfully discharged the same when his performance is the satisfaction of the work required and his supervisors concerned. What does the Master mean by duty in this context?  Certain times duty is referred as debt like pitr ma, rshi ma, deva ma etc.. In what way are we indebted to move into the higher realms of spirituality?

The Vedic revelation is that God has sacrificed Himself so that the Creation or expression of the Divine takes place. We are all the off shoots of the Original Stir and off springs of the Stir. We are products of the ' sacrifice. God in his original nature is all bliss and our original nature is consequently bliss. Thus it is evident and that we are born to share and sacrifice. Our father and mother die when we are born. Certain times it is real death in the physical sense of that term but it is invariably death in the vital, emotional and Etheric aspects of life. Their intention is their nature, their duties shall continue to express in their progeny. The Guru expects us to grasp the truth in all its aspects. The duty we inherit is to spread the blissful state of living with all those with whom we live and move. In other words we have a duty to be happy. This duty we can discharge only by the attitudes of sacrifice and sharing and cooperation. These characteristics we have to develop assiduously and the help of the parents is there in the initial stages. Education imparts this in a sense as we grow. To call all teachers as gurus may not be wrong but the real teacher or guru is the one who connects us with the original purpose of life. We seem to think that we need gurus for various needs. We get lost because we think that there are thousands of problems in the world - inflation, drought, stress, children, this, that... it's enough to drive us crazy. In fact the

world has only one problem- a disorder in the minds of people that stop us from seeing reality that stops us from acting correctly.

There is a dark veil that exists in people's heads- as though we are all blind. We see with our eyes, but not with our minds, and we cannot interpret what we see. (Dr. Madhava was telling that our brain seems to grants us vision even when we are blind suggesting there is another neural path.) This functional disturbance of the mind stops human beings from fulfilling the purpose for which they were created, and that is to evolve into spiritual realms where bliss is our true nature.

Master asserts that ‘ the real spiritual training is that which makes our mind disciplined and regulated , restores moderation in senses and faculties and creates lightness of spirit 1 To develop these characteristics individually is what has been going on in the name of sadhana. And it is possible some of us have imbibed these in our nature. But to develop these virtues by humanity as such we understand is a long way to go.

Humanity has been aiming at this goal is what we see in the efforts of all religions. But religion is materialistic and sticky particularly to rituals and procedures going by the name of tradition. Spirituality struggles to express the noble virtues in a social context without getting soiled. It is like brothers and sisters differ, quarrel and almost wage wars but fraternity and brotherliness persists. This is the primary lesson we get from history of mankind. This fate or trend is what we see in families, states, nations and the world at large. If as Master said we keep the Mission of the Master all differences die. To be united we require the original trait of the Divine namely sacrifice and to be separated all that we require is a fistful of earth. Matter divides and spirituality unites. If we remember the original duty entrusted to us by the divine namely to be blissful and happy all the time in all our dealings we can say we reached the goal of life. The noble life of our Grand Master

attracts all of us to copy Him. May he enable us to be so.

Pranams

K. C. Narayana,            15th Feb.2013